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MOUSE HOUSE
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2010
http://www.archive.org/details/mousehouseOOgodd
MOUSE HOUSE
Also by
Rumer Godden
THE FAIRY DOLL IMPUNITY JANE
THE HOUSEWIFE THE DOLLS' HOUSE THE STORY OF HOLLY AND
IVY
CANDY FLOSS MISS HAPPINESS AND MISS FLOWER ST.
JEROME AND THE LION LITTLE PLUM
HOME IS THE SAILOR THE KITCHEN MADONNA OPERATION SIPPACIK THE OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN A VINEGAR BOTTLE
MOUSE HOUSE
BY RUMER GODDEN Illustrated
by Adrienne Adams
THE VIKING PRESS
•
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT © 1957 BY RUMER GODDEN FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1957 BY THE VIKING PRESS, INC. 625 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK 22 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 57-13962 SEN
Fie
1.
670-49148-9
Mice
— Stories
7 8 9 10 11 76 75 74 73 72
PRINTED IN THE
U.S.A.
BY AFFILIATED LITHOGRAPHERS
For
MARY
GROVES,
because Mouse House belonged to her
Tice It
upon a time there was a
was
like a doll's house,
little
mouse house.
but not for
dolls, for
mice. Its walls
were painted
bricks. Its roof
was
red,
with lines for
gray, with painted tiles and
a red chimney. The roof lifted up, and in the [
7
]
--r
house was a
hall
with a front door, a sitting
room, and a bedroom, each with a window.
The wallpaper had a pattern of spots as small as pinheads, and the carpets were pink flannel. In the hall
was a doormat cut from
two inches of tweed. The
sitting
room had a
painted fireplace, two chairs, and a table. In the bedroom
was a tiny looking
glass and a
bed with bedclothes and a blue and white quilt.
At the window were muslin [
8
]
curtains,
and
on each
sill
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stood thimble-sized pots of gera-
niums; the geraniums were made of scarlet silk.
On
tin-tack pegs on the wall
hung some
dusters no bigger than postage stamps.
Over the front door was a notice that
said,
"MOUSE HOUSE."
Mouse House was given
Mary
to
a girl called
as an Easter present. "It's to keep your
jewelry in," said her father, but head. [
9
]
Mary shook her
"It's
meant
for mice," said Mary, and indeed
there were two mice there already, a he-mouse in the sitting
room and a she-mouse
in the bed-
room. They wore clothes; He-mouse had a suit tie;
She-mouse wore a
dress with a pale blue apron.
They stood on their
with a pale blue ribbon
hind
legs,
and their fur looked just [
10
]
like flannel,
y
their whiskers looked
eyes were as
still
Hke
bristles,
and their
as beads.
"Are you proper mice?" asked Mary. There
was no answer, not
so
much
as a squeak.
He-mouse and She-mouse stayed quite quite, quite
still. [
11
]
still,
Mary was disappointed.
"I
thought mice ran,"
she said.
Most mice
do.
They scamper up and down the
and come into the larder and the cup-
stairs
boards and chmb the table
legs.
They whisk into
holes and run behind the wainscoting.
The
sound of their running can make a rustle and patter like rain, and they go so fast you can
hardly believe you have seen them. That
most mice
is
how
He-mouse and She-
run, but not
mouse.
Mary waited
for
them
to
move— "Even
a tail
or a whisker," said Mary. Sometimes she lifted the roof up quietly to take a sudden peep, but
they were always standing where she had
them;
At put
it
still,
quite, quite
last she took
away on her
left
still.
Mouse House upstairs and chest-of -drawers.
"Don't you want to play with it?" asked her
mother.
"Mice can't play," said Mary, but she was
wrong. [
12
]
f)
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Far down, below-stairs, a cellar where rubbish
in
was
Mary's house, was
kept,
and
there, be-
hind an old broom in the corner, was another
mouse house. upstairs. It
It
was not elegant
like the
one
was a broken flowerpot made com-
fortable with hay.
I
cannot
tell
you how many
mice lived in it because I was never quick enough to catch them, but
it
was brimful
"This overcrowding in houses
of mice. is
a terrible
problem," Mary's father said as he read the
newspaper. The mice in the flowerpot could have told
him
When
that.
they were
all in it
paw, or a
al-
or a tail hanging out, an
ways some whiskers ear, a
asleep there were
mouse
little
leg.
There was not
an eighth of an an inch to spare— if you want to
know how
small that
is,
and the youngest, a
look on a school ruler—
little
girl
mouse
called
Bonnie, ended up most nights pushed out on the cellar floor.
"She will catch cold," said Mother Mouse.
bad to
lie
out on the stone." [
14
]
"It's
!
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f For the mice, Mouse House was not spoiled at all;
they found
it
far
more convenient without
curtains and a table and chairs.
They used one room for sleeping
in,
the other
as a pantry. "That's better," said Mother Mouse. "It IS better not to
have cheese rind [
56
]
in the beds."
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Father Mouse hid a httle under the doormat the
in
hall.
The scraps clothes
made
of wallpaper
and carpet and bed-
a comfortable nest
wrapped each of the geraniums used them for
dolls. [
57
]
;
the girl mice
in a duster
and
What happened
to
He-mouse and She-mouse?
Mary had Ufted them out
of the house at once
but they did not seem to notice when taken away, or that He-mouse's
tie
She-mouse's apron torn. "And
it
was
it
was
off
and
wasn't you
playing," said Mary.
She tidied them up and sewed them on a pincushion and gave
it
to her [
59
]
aunt for Christmas.
The mice are very happy, particularly Bonnie. She was a into
little
nervous at
first
of being shut
Mouse House, but the door soon came off its
hinges, with the
When
mouse
traffic
going in and out.
her brothers and sisters heard her story
they voted she should sleep
in the bed.
"So that
she can never be pushed out again," said Mother
Mouse.
"But little
if I
hadn't been pushed out," said wise
Bonnie, "we shouldn't have Mouse House." [
61
]
H'^r
How
do
I
know
long time after,
this? Well, one day, not a
all
Mary
hid in the cellar
when she
played hide-and-seek. As she sat there, quite quiet,
the mice children
came hopping
out;
hopping and skipping and scampering and jumping. "Then mice do play," said Mary.
After that she would often steal down to
watch and
listen
and [
look.
62
]
x-tfdS'
"They are
my mice," said Mary.
"I
gave them
Mouse House." Then she stopped and thought, Or did one httle
mouse come and fetch
it?
When she had thought that, guess the
rest,
me, and
I
to
and that tell
is
I
how
think she could she came to
you, the story of
House. [
63
]
tell
Mouse
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